


Interim

by Clocketpatch



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Time War Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-07
Updated: 2013-10-07
Packaged: 2017-12-28 16:59:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/994329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clocketpatch/pseuds/Clocketpatch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They thought he was dead, so they buried him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Interim

**Author's Note:**

> Written for juliet316 on the lj comment_fic community. Warning! Angst alert!
> 
> * * *

  
Ace stood over the Professor– no, the Doctor, he hadn't been her professor in years, lifetimes. She stood over the Doctor. She had to think of it in terms of names (titles).

She couldn't, wouldn't, refused to think of it as "the body".

But that's what it was. Hours had passed. The Time Lord medics had shaken their heads and waked away. He'd been shot dead on and there was no regenerating from that. Ace's only response was to set her jaw and shout at them for giving up, at the smoke-stained sky for hiding the ambush, at him for being so stupid and stepping between her and death.

Finally, the tears dried. Ace found a shovel in the rubble and did her best to dig a grave. The ground was hard and the air was hot. Sweat seeped across her war-grimy cheeks.

"I've never been good at this sort of thing," she told him when she'd finished, kneeling down between him and the hole. Her voice was raspy from tears and the labour of digging.

"I've never known what to say when..." She wiped her eyes fiercely with her filthy sleeve. She could still hear him. This him, with the hair (all burned and gone now) and the soft lilting voice.

He'd say "Ace, Ace... Ace... don't cry. Ace..."

She'd never stop hearing him. She'd never stop hearing that last rattle of...

She wouldn't cry. He'd hate that. Instead she took his hand, twisted and burnt as it was, and held it close to her damp cheek.

"I'm sorry," she said. "It should've been me. I should've..."

She stopped, because he wouldn't want that either.

"Thank you for everything."

Then she kissed the crackling skin on the back of his hand. She lowered him into the grave, gentle as she could. It seemed wrong to bury him, but worse to leave him out in the open where scavengers could just rip him apart.

Probably they'd do that anyway, digging him up as soon as Ace left. And she would have to leave soon. The Time Lords were calling their troops. Time to leave. Another battle to fight.

And they were just leaving him here.

Ace sniffed loudly. She found a piece of metal wreckage that looked a bit like a cross and drove it into the ground above the grave. She wasn't religious, but everything in her rebelled at just leaving him there by himself in an unmarked grave. The universe had gone to shit maybe, but how could they just be moving out so soon? Leaving the Doctor behind. Leaving him in some chicken scratch hole on the battle field and –

But Ace hardened herself and moved on when her platoon leader called. She would fight and she would win. Because he'd taught her to never give up.

 

*

 

The Doctor woke up to find himself half buried in scree with a stray dog gnawing on his arm. Another was sniffing his face. The Doctor didn't know who or where or what he was. Only pain and confusion and the scent of burning clinging thick to everything.

He screamed.

 

*

 

There was another battle on Miy6478 Minor a few weeks later (or perhaps it was a few weeks before? Linear time had long ago ceased to make any sense). The man who had been the Professor, the Doctor, the friend and mentor of a girl called Ace, was found living among the rubble. He was quickly recruited back into the fight to help fill the thinning ranks.

They'd lost so many good soldiers. They'd lost the girl called Ace.

The Doctor went a bit mad for a while. Which was okay, because the universe had already done that. His own people, always a bit morally dubious, were spinning wildly out of control as the fight and the war took over, shattering any lingering hint of complacence or decency.

Still, it was the right side, the better side, because any sacrifice had to be better than a universe ruled by those Dalek scum.

Black lines. Twisted bodies. Marching metal armies.

The Doctor knew the time lines better than anyone. He blasted planets out of existence and destroyed whole races before they had the chance to be born. Innocent races, who's only crime was their misfortune to evolve on planets which might become strategic to the Daleks and their allies a few billion years down the line.

He did this gleefully. He did this with madness. He did this with the firm conviction that he was the hero, doing the right thing.

Thin blades. Ready to stab. Ready to fall. Blood and dirt and dark and heavy, crushing, choking, everywhere, kill them first, save it, save something thing, save the universe by destroying it –

He wasn't really mad, and that was the worst of it. He'd gone spiraling beyond madness and sanity into the crispest of clarity (he thought). The on-coming night blazed against his new, granite face and he watched, satisfied, as the stars went out one by one, taking legions of the enemy with them.

It was only when he held the match above a small blue and green world that he finally paused for moment in the maelstrom, feeling Ace's ghostly hand on his chest begging him to stop. Asking where he'd gone. What he'd become.

Breathing hard, panting, exhausted, trembling. There was no answer. The flames licked his fingers as the match burnt down, never touching the fuse he'd so carefully set.

Not much later he destroyed his own planet, his own people, because they had followed his destructive example too well.

He lay bleeding and broken on the TARDIS floor. On the atrium floor. On the glass booth's floor, radiation keening. Not dying. Never dying, even though he wanted it.

Not dying, because he'd never really woken up.

All this time.

He was still buried alive.

 

 

_-fin-_

* * *

Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.  
  
This story archived at <http://www.whofic.com/viewstory.php?sid=35791>


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